I'm a Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, a writer here and there on this and that and strangely, one of the global experts on the metal scandium, one of the rare earths. An odd thing to be but someone does have to be such and in this flavour of our universe I am. I have written for The Times, Daily Telegraph, Express, Independent, City AM, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer and online for the ASI, IEA, Social Affairs Unit, Spectator, The Guardian, The Register and Techcentralstation. I've also ghosted pieces for several UK politicians in many of the UK papers, including the Daily Sport.

Apple Asks For Another $707 Million From Samsung: And The Interesting Bit

Apple Inc has asked for a court order for a permanent U.S. sales ban on Samsung Electronics products alleged to have violated its patents along with additional damages of $707 million on top of the billion-dollar verdict won by the iPhone maker last month.

Having achieved victory in the Californian patent trial against Samsung Apple is now asking for further damages. Interest on the damages already awarded, damages for the continuing sales that are ongoing and so on. However, here’s what I thought was the interesting part:

“The harm to Apple was deliberate, not accidental,” Apple attorneys said in court papers filed Sept. 21 in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. Samsung “willfully diluted its trade dress, taking billions in sales in the fast- growing U.S. smartphone market at a key moment in the transition between feature phones and smartphones,” attorneys said.

I’m not surprised that this is what they’re thinking, it’s just interesting to see the point being made openly. This isn’t a fight about who sells what telephone hardware: it’s a fight about who gets to dominate the future ecosystem.

Every so often we get to a break in a technology. When the incumbents find themselves faced with disruptive insurgents. Examples abound: the move from horses to cars meant that those providing energy for transport found that their incumbency protected them not one whit. For that energy for travel moved from hay and oats, or perhaps teams of horses, to the provision of petrol. So there was no value any longer in that supply chain that provided horses, hay and oats. And no incumbency value either: that you had such a chain, that an insurgent would have to spend a lot of capital to build one, didn’t help you either.

Here we’ve got this move from feature phones to smartphones. Nokia and RIM were perhaps the incumbents in that earlier world. Apple clearly faces competition from Android in the smartphone world. And the battle isn’t just to make sure that the current generation of phones sold come from Apple. It’s to make sure that the dominant ecosystem is Apple’s. That’s what they’re pointing to in this “at a key moment in the transition”. They want to make sure that competition (as they allege from copying) doesn’t allow a second provider. For it is at this very moment of technological transition that many forms have an opportunity to establish a market beachhead. Once we’ve made the transition, to the point where the smartphone market is largely a replacement one rather than users adopting one or other design for the first time, then it will be very much more difficult for a new market entrant to successfully compete.

That’s really what the battle is about at present. To a reasonable level of accuracy those who go with one smartphone ecosystem or another, Android, Windows, Apple, are likely to stay with it through their lives. And this transition point is precisely when an entire generation of customers is up for grabs. Something that’s unlikely to happen again if truth be told, this ability to gain a lifelong customer without actually having to persuade them away from another ecosystem.

That’s why the fight is being fought so aggressively. There’s decades of profits riding on who gets how many of this first generation of smartphone customers now.

Rather like there was with Apple and Microsoft‘s Windows for PCs those decades ago. And I have a feeling that’s a comparison they ruminate on in Cupertino. Along with a “Not this time!”.

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This story reminds me of the story of General Motors creating a dependency on motor vehicles by buying and destroying the interurban streetcar systems that abounded in the 1930s and 1940s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy covers it in detail. But Apple isn’t buying other phone manufacturers and destroying them, they are just simply prosecuting on their protected intellectual property. Of course there was a battle for market share in a nascent industry, but the smartphone revolution was easily predicted by anyone who had travelled to Japan in the beginning of the last decade. While they didn’t have very good operating systems for their phones, they had phone apps and app stores all figured out.

The major unsung difference between the iPhone and the rest of phones of the time was the iPhone was the first widely available phone to use preemptive multitasking and protected memory, two features that caused Windows 95 to rapidly pull away from Macintosh, two environments on equal footing prior to that time. Certainly, Mr. Jobs learned his lesson well after losing control of user interface elements that he was pivotal in making mainstream, and today that is manifesting itself in the iWars that we’re seeing. But again, it shouldn’t surprise anyone.

And Samsung, when they steal that trade dress, and Amazon when they sell at a loss, and Motorola and Samsung, when they abuse Standards Essential Patents are all willing to take these risks for exactly the same reasons.

and Motorola and Samsung “and Apple”, when they abuse Standards Essential Patents – you forgot the bit where Apple copied 4G LTE.

Make patents valid for only two years and the world would see a lot more innovation, rather than squatting and making fools of each other in court. Two years is more than ample to capture a market with new technology.

Ridiculous…anti-competitive… Apple already has more money than god why do they need more?

Seriously re-thinking my purchase of an iPhone 4s. Should of gone for the Galaxy. The iPhone is an example of why I haven’t bought Apple before though…no expandability… can’t use memory expander cards…. expensive and doesn’t have the latest features included like near field communications or 4G.

First Apple product I have bought for myself ever… probably be the last if this BS doesn’t stop.

Apple reminds me of the spoiled little child crying and screaming because they can’t get 20 more minutes on the play ground after they beat up on a kid for doing something they don’t like. I work in I.T. and have had to deal with apple customers, not all but A LOT are no open to the concept that there might be anything better than Apple so forget getting them to see reason when the think the precious Apple corporation has a competitor that actually was beating them in sales. To them it never was or can be the fact that people liked the affordability and the way the Galaxy or other android phones worked

This is exactly why we need the various trade commissions to step up and force the various providers to ensure a generic means to transfer your services, contacts, & data (text message, emails and etc) from any smart device to another smart device via a method the consumer controls – that is stupid simple to use for the consumer… All content like movies, music and other such copy protected things need this mobility between devices, service and etc also.

Apple’s latest request simply proves how anti American they are. They want to annihilate choice in the market place. Why? Because in a free market they cant compete. That’s why they have never taken more than a miniscule amount of the PC market. I hate apple products, my wife has an iPad (which she admits she would never buy another) and my kid has a iPod touch, but are kludgey to anyone with a half a brain when it comes to advanced tasks. If you like dumbed down locked down products then Apple is the company for you. Lets face is Apple has done its share of theft of ideas over the years just look at the new notifications system they implemented. Apple is anti America, they want to continue to have their product produced overseas for pennies, under conditions where workers commit suicide to get out of work. When was the last time you heard of an American factory worker killing themselves because of working conditions? It’s my opinion that Apple is far more evil than Microsoft ever was at this point.

It seems that it is being assumed by the author that once a phone ecosystem has been chosen features no longer really play a part in the choice we make every 2 years (or less) in choosing a (new) phone system.

I don’t see this idea of a life long commitment to phone ecosystems holding water in my own household. We have changed systems 3 times and the new features the manufactures & carriers offer are the main reason for the change; not a choice made years past.

For the most part the only binding factor with phones is the data in your contact management interface and a few apps; most of which can be migrated or forgotten if a new phone system is the direction you chose. Although an interesting thought, this idea may work well with tampons, but not so well with cell phones as far as I see it

I call for a smartphone ban on buying Apple devices for abusing the mediocre US Patent and US legal systems. Why is the US Patent system not reviewing and un-granting Apple’s obvious patents and invalidating how they are being used in court. Apple just caused the US Patent system to be irrelevant and a tool for destroying technological progress. I used to like Apple, now I will not buy any Apple devices any more and will not buy any for any member on my family.

Apple doesn’t grasp the amount of damage that it has done to itself. From a great neutral looking company that offered great hardware/software to a company that is hated for un-ethical practices. Apple corporate management will soon learn about the power that enraged/disappointed smartphone users have and the number of Apple fans that it has lost in these latest series of fiascos.

I guess with Apple’s 5 poor technological innovation offerings(yes they are poor lately!!), poor software quality, using heavy marketing targeted at naive users, and the removal of key apps like Google maps and YouTube, Apple is just killing it’s own sells, and possibly, it has already lost the smartphone market lead by it’s own fault. Karma will get Apple for it’s bad behavior. Technology is won by the best technological offerings and best software/hardware quality not by manipulating the US Patent system, the legal system, bulling companies that provided their key quality and component technologies, etc.